Yes, conservative lawmakers appear more often on your teevee than liberal ones do. And yes, this is
good news for John McCain!
Senators and representatives from the conservative end of the ideological spectrum have made 57 percent of the appearances, compared with 42 percent for liberals, according to an Upshot analysis of data collected by American University.
This slightly lopsided distribution is primarily the result of three Republican senators’ frequent visits to the network shows: John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell. Because of the Republican Party’s control of the House during the past three years, its leaders and committee chairmen are presented with more opportunities to discuss the latest political news.
Why John McCain and Lindsey Graham in particular are on permanent rotation remains a puzzler—see past discussions on their provable wrongy wrongness—but putting them on the disabled list for a few months is probably not an option, given the number of things in the world that really need their urgent comments on any given Sunday. Particularly curious, though, is the notion that Republicans are on teevee more often because they are in control of the House. That would make sense, except that when the Democrats had control of the House
Republicans still appeared on the news programs more than Democrats. When Barack Obama was elected, thus placing both executive and legislative branches under Democratic leadership,
Republicans still appeared on the Sunday shows more than Democrats.
When Democrats took back the House in 2006, in fact, Meet the Press celebrated the occasion by asking "what now for the Republicans," featuring John McCain. Who was invited to give the Democratic perspective on the what was next "for the Democrats? Joe Lieberman, who had just been primaried out of the party but had won re-election as an independent. Republicans appeared on the Sunday shows more than Democrats during the Clinton years, and during the Bush years, and during the Obama years.
So no, it would appear that whether or not our elected leadership is staffed primarily by Republicans or Democrats is not the actual determiner of whether or not our airwaves are saturated by conservative talking heads or liberal talking heads. When the Republicans are in charge they are booked on teevee to talk about the things they want to do because they are in charge, and when Democrats are in charge Republicans are booked on teevee to discuss how they are not in charge and how upset that makes them.